In Person
by BrokePerception
Summary: [AU] Clarke and Lexa meet in the most impossible, cheesy way... through Clarke's lost sketch book.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The blonde doctor-to-be took a deep breath as she calmly shuffled a bit more to the right to allow the people attempting to force their way onto the already full carriage some more room. Inevitably, the two people who had been left on the platform wormed their way in still. Clarke felt how she was squished between the rest of the people that were with her on the metro, one of them her class mate and companion Wells. The look in his face told her enough: he, too, was getting squished and would be happy to be off of the carriage and on his way back to his dorm room. The two had taken this very metro together to and from Medicine classes since their first year at university, even if Clarke and Wells hadn't known one another until several weeks in and they had recognized each other's faces from in class and had struck up a conversation. They were very used to extremely full carriages on Friday evenings, but this Friday was absolutely exceptional, she felt. Clarke didn't believe that she had ever seen the metro this full.

She sucked her bottom lip between even white teeth to swallow her wince as she felt the wheels of a heavy navy suitcase hit the back of her heel. She then thought about her own first year in university classes, when she had still been so shy and hadn't know anyone on campus yet, not from classes or her dorm. She had stayed at campus from Sunday to Friday evenings and commuted back home to Mommy for the weekends, until she had somehow connected with a few people in her classes, like Wells, and, especially, with her room mates, Octavia and Raven, who studied Greek and Engineering respectively. She had come loose from her childhood home, from her mother, and had started to become more her own person. She had gotten to waste time with friends more often, slowly getting to know them a bit better ── people she knew like the back of her hand right now. Clarke Griffin, in her third year of Medicine at university, returned home to her mother every few weeks now. In the weekends, she did things together with her room mates now, like movies and concerts ── the things that she had used to do with her father before his early death. An aneurysm at age thirty-eight when she herself had been fourteen had caused that unexpected, tragic loss.

As Clarke felt the familiarity of the jolts in the rail turns and shifts, she knew, without looking ── not that she could see if she tried, with all the people that stood so close to her ── the next stop would be Wells'. Hers would be the next. Clarke's knowledge was proven correct by the young black man beside her beginning to move to the metro doors. If he wasn't close to them when the metro halted, he knew they would open and close again before he, or anyone not close enough, could really manage to get off. He (and she) had learned that the hard way.

"Bye," he murmured, his words only getting lost in the rumble of other people and their voices. The blonde watched the way he slipped away between a man and woman a few feet from her before he completely disappeared from her sights. What was typical for such very busy days on any type of Washington D.C.'s public transportation ── maybe elsewhere, too ── was the mix of smells that emanated from several people who definitely should shower more often, too.

"Bye!" Clarke called. She doubted if he had caught her words of goodbye, but she was certain that he knew she hadn't intended impoliteness.

Before the metro had properly come to its halt, the mass of people on it began to wriggle and push again. You would guess that with Wells and a few other men and women off, she would have some more room, but as soon as they had gotten off, more people had forced their way on the metro, which made it so that Clarke still didn't really have any room to breathe. One more stop, and she would have air again, she thought, as she felt the way the metro shifted under her feet on another set of rails.

Experience after many years of taking this metro had taught her that her stop at this time of day, specifically this day in the week, was a very popular one for people, like her, to get off. It wouldn't really be necessary for her to begin to wriggle to the doors, like Wells had to do. She would have plenty of room soon. A few high school girls ── or so she thought ── before had already started to dig up their keys, which confirmed Clarke's suspicion.

The metro began to slow down nearly as soon as it had gained speed again ── Wells' stop and hers were very closer together indeed ── and the blonde felt the pocket of her dark jeans pants to check if her phone was still there, as well as the flap of her dark green shoulder bag, to ensure that it was closed still. She felt the familiar shape of her wallet then, through the thick fabric of her full bag, and she was reassured.

Great relief, as well as a feeling of freedom from the confined space she had been in for twelve minutes, washed over Clarke as she felt the cool air on her face when the metro doors opened and the high school girls began to move off, which offered her a bit more room as well. She bit the fleshy inside of her left cheek to suppress her growls of frustration as two middle-aged men began to wriggle their way on the metro before everyone had managed to get off. She was certain that they were the type to grumble when they were the ones who had to get off and someone else tried to get on before they had done so. Clarke Griffin disliked hypocrites like that.

Squished in-between the two people attempting to get on, as well as those attempting to get off and the people who wanted to stay on, Clarke began to fear the worst: that she wouldn't manage to get off of the carriage before the doors closed once more. Someone at her back, whom she didn't have time to look back at and say her thanks to, seemed aware of the situation she was in and moved back just a bit to give her just enough space to get off of the metro. She yanked hard at her bag when it got caught on a teenage boy's supersized suitcase, the way she felt the strap pull on her shoulder her indication. She managed to free herself as well as her belongings only just in time to hop off right before the metro doors closed and it continued its way.

Clarke Griffin hadn't heard the thud of her sketch book when it slid from her bag onto the floor of the metro as she tried to pull the strap free.

It was when she got back to her dorm room only and set her shoulder bag down on the kitchen table ── the first surface she came across when she got in ── that she noticed that the flap of her bag wasn't in place. The blonde's forehead creased as she opened her bag and immediately began to check if all of her things were still there, just in case. Relief washed over her as she noticed her wallet and agenda ── the two things that, she suspected, would have been most likely to fall from her bag or be stolen ── before she felt her heart sink and she concluded that her big gray-cover sketchbook was gone. She checked her bag again, certain that she had still had her sketch book when she left class. She must have lost it on the way, and she immediately knew where she must have. She, also, immediately knew she wouldn't see it again if she had, indeed, lost it on the metro. Clarke Griffin was inconsolable.

It was just her luck, though, that the woman who had kindly moved back for her to let her off the metro ── whom she hadn't looked back at ── had seen her sketch book fall and had picked it up right before it could (and would) get trampled by any of the hurried feet of the people who attempted to get home. 

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Author's Note: Please review. I'm on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr as well, by the way ── feel free to hop on and have a look and follow me; I'm BrokePerception on all three!


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A sigh eschewed from pink lips, as the blonde leaned her head back against the back of the couch, her thumb pressing the side of her phone to turn the screen to black. She had done a quick, uncomplicated Google search for lost items on the metro and read a few posts on various forums from people who had been in her shoes: different people with different items lost but who obviously shared her feelings of loss. None of the many questions and answers she had read had been very hopeful, nor helpful.

Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment before she opened them again and ran her blue depths across the ceiling, unconsciously tracing the cracks in the white surface as her thoughts whirred and short-circuited at the same time, racing in too many different directions without following a specific path with a specific end goal. The squeamish feeling in the pit of her stomach that had been born and only grown since the horrible discovery that her sketch book was gone was only amplified by the eery quiet in her dorm room, the soft cracks of the wooden door frames as they set and yielded to their old age and soft but insistent whizzing of the warm water passing through the radiator and warming the apartment to a comfortable inside temperature. The absence of her two room mates was nearly tangible, but she couldn't say that she didn't understand Octavia and Bellamy's wish to be with their grandmother post-surgery on the one hand and Raven's desire to be with her new boyfriend on the other hand. Either way, none of them could have possibly known in advance that the blonde doctor-to-be would lose her sketch book on the metro today and might want to drown her misery; not she, and most definitely not her friends.

Lifting her heavy head up from the back of the couch, Clarke pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and chewed it absentmindedly, her eyes falling upon a picture of Bellamy and Octavia on the low closet on which their shared television stood. The picture had been taken last summer and showed Octavia on her older brother's back, her hands covering his eyes. The sickening feeling that coiled in her stomach prevented the picture from raising a smile to her face as it usually did. While Bellamy didn't share a dorm room with the three girls, they spent a lot of time together and he and Octavia, his little sister, were inseparable in many ways even though both of them were stubbornly independent as well. Oddly enough, their relationship sometimes reminded her of how her own relationship with her father had been.

While the pain of losing him wasn't as all-encompassing as it once had been anymore, for it had had seven years to settle, whenever her mind filled with memories of him and of old times where they hadn't even thought about the brevity and fragility of life, she often wished that she had spent more time with him when she had the chance. In that regard, she completely understood that Bellamy and Octavia wanted to be with their grandmother now. While she had never met the eighty-three-year-old woman in the flesh, she had seen her and talked to her through Skype calls a handful of times −− Mrs. Blake insisted on seeing her grandchildren regularly even if that meant that someone always had to come over to help her set up the call on her end (mostly Octavia and Bellamy's mother or aunt), since she had no clue about what she called advanced technology. Clarke knew that the old woman had been a beacon of safety and a rock both Octavia and Bellamy had been able to rely on when their parents got divorced and that she meant a great deal to them. She had been due to get a hip replacement that morning, and it had gone without question that her grandchildren would be there when she woke up.

Raven's reasons for not being home were undoubtedly more selfish than that, but Clarke also couldn't blame her for that. While she couldn't rightfully say that she had ever been 'crazy crazy' about anyone in such a way that she had wanted to spend every waking second with them −− and preferably alone −− herself, it wasn't the first time she had seen her room mate like this over a guy. She had to admit, though, that she had never seen her be this crazy over someone. At least someone would reciprocate Finn's feelings then. She hadn't been that person, despite the fact that Finn has started out showing particular interest in her at first. They had met at a bar through mutual friends' mutual friends, and they had flirted a bit back and forth for a few weeks, especially from his side to hers, but she hadn't been interested enough to pursue what he intended further. When her response to his flirting had lacked significantly, Raven's outgoing and suggestive, barely subtle, nature had caught his attention and seemed to have rubbed off on him. They had hit it off and had been lip-locked an overwhelming portion of the time they spent together since. She wished them all the best, despite the fact that she had difficulty seeing any kind of future perspectives featuring them as a couple.

Blinking, Clarke averted her gaze from staring unseeingly at the pictures on the closet and inadvertently glanced down at the phone in her hand, acutely aware of the cold metal laying heavily in her hand. She had taken pictures of a few of her pieces, and some of them were online on the blog she inconsistently kept, often forgot about and picked up again, but it couldn't replace the real sketches she had made, especially since she had nearly filled it entirely by now and it wouldn't just be two, three pieces, but her work of the past year.

She pressed her thumb against the side of the phone briefly so that the screen would unlock and she could check the time without necessarily unlocking it. It was just after eight-thirty. She considered calling Octavia or Raven, perhaps even Wells, and tell them what had happened so that she could share her feelings of loss even if they wouldn't have a solution either or feel the hole that had seemingly been carved in her being at the knowledge of having lost one of her dearest possessions. She decided against it, though. Raven wouldn't appreciate being interrupted, if she even noticed that anyone was attempting to reach her, and she didn't want to intrude on the grandparent grandchildren time between the Blakes and their recovering grandmother either. Wells was a valid option, since he hadn't mentioned any plans for the evening and she thought he would understand or at least try to understand how upset she was, but she decided against contacting him as well, even though she couldn't explain the reasons why.

The next time that she pressed her thumb against the side of her phone, she did press long enough to unlock it. Picking it up, she drew on the spark of determination that had jolted through her veins in the brief seconds before she took action and slid her thumbs across the virtual keyboard once more, slightly altering her search function in an attempt to find the answers she hadn't found earlier. She couldn't have been the only one who had ever lost anything precious on the metro, and she couldn't believe −− tried not to believe for sure −− that no one had ever had their prized possession returned to them. Scrolling through the results, she clicked on the few she thought might hold good suggestions, most often to click back in disappointment. As the minutes ticked by, the amount of unresolved situations she had read about grew and the shred of determination that had formed in her died out nearly as soon as it had originated, she quickly gave in to her despondency again.

The best suggestion that she had come across, from someone who had apparently gotten his phone back that way after losing it on the metro, was to send a tweet to the Metro DC Twitter handle and explain what, where and when very specifically, so that the staff could check if the item had been left behind on the metro at the end destination and if not, so that it could be noticed by as many people as possible. Tapping her foot against the carpet rhythmically yet unconsciously, she tried to make up her mind if it was even worth the effort. Figuring that she should take any chance she could to get her beloved sketch book back, she closed her browser and opened her Twitter app, beginning to type furiously and doing her best to be succinct yet clear in the limited amount of characters she was allowed. If it lead to nothing, so be it, but at least she would have tried, she told herself.

She left her WiFi on after she had sent her Tweet, throwing her phone on the couch next to her before getting up and moving towards the kitchen, in search of that bag of chips she knew was hidden somewhere in the back of the closet despite her and her room mates' deal with each other to eat healthy. It was the best option at comfort food that she had to her availability without having to go out −− which was the last thing that she wanted to do right now. No, she would empty that big bag of chips all by herself while seated in front of the TV in her favorite pajamas, watching some old reruns of The Big Bang Theory and hoping for the best, hoping against all hope that something fruitful would come forth from her 137 character block of text to Metro DC.


End file.
